Travel Lenses

[davidI]

There's a very good possibility I will be spending the next 2 years travelling the world. I want to get together a reasonable set-up for this!

Back in the day I did a lot of black & white film stuff and had a dark room set-up in my house. Unfortunately, the cost and lack of time caught up to me and I let the hobby slip.

Recently, I picked up a 300D. I figured it was the perfect solution since I wanted to get into colour and I'm also an avid computer user (albeit no master with Photoshop).

For my travel purposes, I imagine I will want to photograph lots of landscapes and architecture....for which I will want a wide angle, but I also would like to take some more portrait style photos of locals doing their thing (especially in rural areas...) for which I'd prefer some sort of telephoto. Because I want to keep my stuff reasonably compact and light, as well as not extremely expensive in case I get ripped off, what would you all suggest?

In addition to the camera body and 1 or 2 lenses, I would like to take a compact tripod, several batteries, chargers and I'll be buying tons of CF cards. Originally I thought about purchasing a laptop or uploading at internet cafés but I'm starting to think that will be a huge burden.

Thoughts? Ideas? Suggestions? Experiences?

[DJ Lazy]

Exterior/Interior Architecture and landscapes would work well with some around or below the 20mm point IMO.

Tokina 12-24 f/4 would be excellent. I know that D'z loves it..

Canon 85 f1/.8 for Portrait work would be great.. Alot of people use it for alot of street portraits. I know there is one for sale in the Marketplace for around $400.. Click here (http://forums.beyond.ca/showthread.php?s=&threadid=128189)

Not sure how compact of a tripod you are refering to.. especially when talking with regards to mounting the 300D on it.. but I might have something that will work for you.

[lint]

When travelling I find the wider the better. Unless you're intending to shoot wildlife, I would skip a telephoto. The tokina 12-24, canon 10-22, sigma 10-20 would all be fine choices. 2 mm might not seem like much, but it does when it comes to wide angle. The sigma 10-20 has gotten some very favorable reviews, and is quite a bit cheaper than the canon.

Plenty to chose from when it comes to standard telephoto too. Canon 24-85 might be a little short. The tamron 24-135 has also gotten some very good reviews, so have the sigma 18-125 and 18-200. The canon 24-105 is a great lens if it's in your budget, and the IS is amazing.

Add in a prime for low light and you're good to go. The 50mm is a must have. It's so small and light, it doesn't make sense to leave it behind.

There are some very nice compact tripods. Gitzo CF 4 section tripods. The newer carbon 6x are extrememly light weight and compact. The 1158 would be an excellent choice. 4 section, 2.1 lbs. Hard to beat.

The problem is that the good stuff for travel is going to be pricey. Hard to have cheap, light weight and good.

Instead of a laptop and a ton of CF cards, get yourself a portable hd with card reader. A flashtrax or similar device. Small lightweight and more cost effective than a bunch of cf cards. I found that 4 gb (2x2gb) was plenty when I was travelling. Hard to shoot more than 4 gb a day.

For a bargain travel kit, I'd go with a sigma 10-20, tamron 24-135 and 50 1.8. I just spent 3 weeks in Thailand, cambodia and HK. My travel kit is 10-22, 24-105 and 50 1.8, with a 40 gb flashtrax, 2x2gb sandisk ultraII cards. I picked up a gitzo 1157 tripod when I was in HK (I didn't need the super compact 1158) and a manfrotto 486 rc2 ball head. Everything but the tripod and ball head fit inside a $5M crumpler bag, although a little tight. Had a great time.

[turboMiata]

lint, i remember having this exact same conversation with you months ago! looking forward to seeing your photos from the trip.

i flew 6 times last year and my setup is as follows:

- 50mm f/1.8 mk 1
- 70-200 f/4
- 17-40 f/4
- 20D with grip
- Manfrotto 190MF3 with 3030 3way head

now that i've upgraded to the 70-200 f/2.8, my back is going to suffer even more. i'm looking for a better solution.

davidI, if you can only bring one lens, the sigma 18-200mm is a pretty good compromise. however, the f/6.3 could become a real problem as the 300D doesn't focus well past f/5.6.

http://www.ephotozine.com/equipment/tests/testdetail.cfm?test_id=365

now if you were a nikon shooter, i'd be recommending this of course:

http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/images1/18-200.jpg

[BerserkerCatSplat]

18-200 VR :drool: Such a sweet lens, the wait time for getting one right now is ridiculous, or so I hear.


The amount of space you have and the amount of weight you want to take will really dictate your lens choice. Primes are nice because they take up little room and are relatively light, but they lack the flexibility of a zoom. I'm a big fan of my 50mm, but on a 1.5 crop body it's not the best walkaround lens - I would go for a 35mm or wider instead.

[C4S]

Get a 10-22 mm

a 18-200 mm

should be good enough for most situation, ( and light weight )

Plus a 50mm F1.4 for low light shoot! :thumbsup:

[D'z Nutz]

Originally posted by lint
The sigma 10-20 has gotten some very favorable reviews, and is quite a bit cheaper than the canon.

You can cross this lens off the list. It's the cheapest of the ultra wides, but the lens distortion on it is UGLY. I like a nice wide angle lens with a barrel'y distorted look to it. The sigma 10-20 is wavey! :barf:

If you're not sure of the kind of focal lengths you want, you can always find a used 28-105mm f/3.5-4.5 II USM for less than $200 or the 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM for about $400. These cover a wide range of lengths and the image quality is very good for the price. They're not super wide nor super long, but atleast you'll have an idea of what you'll want.

For me, my travel lenses would (will) be:

Tokina 12-24 f/4
Canon 70-200 f/4L
and probably a fast 50mm.

If you want a lens that's close to what your eyes see on a 1.6x crop body, there's the sigma 30mm f/1.4 or a cheaper alternative the Canon 35mm f/2

[lint]

Originally posted by D'z Nutz


You can cross this lens off the list. It's the cheapest of the ultra wides, but the lens distortion on it is UGLY. I like a nice wide angle lens with a barrel'y distorted look to it. The sigma 10-20 is wavey! :barf:


from the photozone (http://www.photozone.de/8Reviews/lenses/sigma_1020_456/index.htm) review:

The Sigma AF 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX HSM DC is a worthy alternative in the ultra-wide arena for APS-C DSLRs. At 10mm it showed some of the highest resolution figures that we've seen so far here whereas at 14mm and 20mm the results are slightly worse than the rest of the gang but still pretty good.
On the down-side the lens shows fairly heavy vignetting at large aperture settings. At 10mm there're some quite pronounced barrel distortions at the extreme corners (far less in the inner image field) whereas at 14mm pincushion distortions can be quite obvious.
It's a joy to use this lens with its excellent build quality, smooth controls and fast AF on top.

The alternatives in this zoom range perform quite similar so you've to consider your priorities. The Sigma AF 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX HSM DC is surely worth a deeper look here.

The 10-22 is the better lens, also quite a bit more expensive. There are always trade offs when it comes to price and quality.

[D'z Nutz]

Does the site you're referring to have any photo samples of the 10-20? The samples I've seen were yuck awful, including a brick wall test. Sure, not the best example, but the waviness I was referring to was blatantly obvious (even in the center of the frame).

[TurboMedic]

I would just be recapping what was stated already, so I'll just be vague.....3 essential lenses for travel:

a GOOD prime (see above 50mm 1.4 or 1.8, I find 85mm to be too long for good use most of the time). These take by far the best photos, they just limit (or create unique perspective) your "frameability" on the fly....

a WIDE zoom (Sigma 10-20, 12-24's, you name it, just really wide...)

a moderate tele ( 24-105, 70-300, 55-200, whatever range you're most comfortable with)


I wouldn't carry too much longer than a 300mm, just due to portability. The 50mm is nearly non existant (actually, if canon is anything like Nikon, the 45mm is barely there...), its a pocketable lens. I do Macro stuff myself when travelling, so you may want to look into a multi-purpose lens that has macro capeability, if thats what you're into.....

[C4S]

From what I have read .. the Sigma 10-20 is not bad .. and it is the cheapest one as well ..

However, Sigma always suffer at QC .. you may get a good one .. and you may get a bad one ..

As compare, Factory Canon one is always good, but you pay the higher price. ( $1000 vs $600 )

Tamron and Tokina are alwasy better third party lens companies .. in general.

I was thinking the Tamron/Tokina/Sigma/Canon last yr ..

And I bought the Tokina 12-24, it is awesome! and I love it also because it is fixed @ F4 !!! It is almost as good as the Canon one, and better then the Sigma one in most case !! ( I didn't compare to the Tamron one .. since it only go up to 18mm! )


:D

[Ben]

5D + 28-300mm L IS ownz you all. :poosie:

I love it.

[muse017]

Originally posted by Ben
5D + 28-300mm L IS ownz you all. :poosie:

I love it.


:werd:

Add a fast/bright lens like 50.4 or 35.2 if you have enough budget
If you are going to stick with 300 then 18-200 would be your best friend for travel.

[lint]

Originally posted by D'z Nutz
Does the site you're referring to have any photo samples of the 10-20? The samples I've seen were yuck awful, including a brick wall test. Sure, not the best example, but the waviness I was referring to was blatantly obvious (even in the center of the frame).

The site did have samples, but took them down due to bandwidth. Plenty of sample pics can be found on pbase (http://search.pbase.com/search?q=sigma+10-20&b=Search+Photos&c=sp)

[davidI]

Thanks for the advice everyone! I will have to do some more research and test drive a few lenses before I make my final choices!!

As far as the portable hard drive goes, has anyone used an adapter to upload to their .mp3 player or the like? I would rather drop money on a large .mp3 player and upload to it than spend the cash on something meant for uploading from a CF card - just because I will be able to use the .mp3 player after my travels. Thoughts?

[lint]

Originally posted by davidI
Thanks for the advice everyone! I will have to do some more research and test drive a few lenses before I make my final choices!!

As far as the portable hard drive goes, has anyone used an adapter to upload to their .mp3 player or the like? I would rather drop money on a large .mp3 player and upload to it than spend the cash on something meant for uploading from a CF card - just because I will be able to use the .mp3 player after my travels. Thoughts?

You can look into the ipod camera connector. It allows you to dump from your camera directly to an ipod. Problem is that it will suck the batteries of both the ipod and camera dry. A friend of mine had it and he would just use it at night in his hotel room. Wouldn't recommend using it without having the ipod plugged in and the camera fully charged. It was a pretty slow transfer too.

The flashtrax and epson p-2000 can both be used as mp3 players as well. They'd be a little bulky for that purpose though.

[muse017]

As for the portable storage, I would say buy 4gig menory card and get a web disk type of storage area on the internet. That's what i did when i was away for 2 month trip to asia(Japan&Korea)
Like some places, if you paid them 30bucks per year you can get like 40gig of storage space on their website.
It worked out really good since there were interent access places everywhere.

Portable MP3+hard-drive type storage works pretty good for travelling around as well if you don't have an accessability to the internet.

Just my 2 cent

[davidI]

Yea, I considered doing the online storage thing but the problem is that some areas I go may not have internet cafés...and even if they do they may have slow connections. I can't imagine trying to upload 4 gigs over a 56K modem!

I'm not worried about internet access in most of asia, western europe, or australia.

I don't know about thailand, mongolia, turkey, south africa, chile, portugal, eastern europe or wherever else I end up though!

I think I will look into uploading onto some sort of portable .mp3 player and then every 6 weeks or so I'll upload them to a laptop and burn them to DVD.

[benyl]

A couple of years ago, I had a mp3 player with a screen. Can't remember what it was called. Had a 20GB drive and a CF port for copying photos. Ask Melinda what she bought. Something that only stores photos off CF.

Dell was selling 2GB Kingston CF for about $60 a few weeks ago. I picked up 1. You might want to look for sales.

Also, getting stuff from the US is getting better and better everyday.